Religion of the Night
by lordtrayus
Summary: Post season three, Roy is still Arsenal and Oliver and Felicity are together. A strange new cult is in town, killing or abducting kids for who knows what purpose, and it seems like the supernatural could be involved. But another vigilante has arrived in town, on a mission similar to that of Oliver, to save the kids, and to do that, Oliver will have to work with the Batwoman!


**Disclaimer: I do not own Arrow (or I'd have made the obvious decision and just renewed a certain contract)**

Religion of the Night

 _Coda: Post season three, however with some differences._

 _Ra's has been defeated and Oliver and Felicity are together. Felicity is now in charge of what is again Queen Industries, and Ray has left the city in order to set up a new branch in Coast City. Oliver didn't alienate Diggle and the two remain good friends and is even an uncle to baby Sara, and Oliver remains the Arrow._

 _Thea hasn't become Speedy and remains in charge of Verdant, and Roy's name was cleared by ARGUS as a favour to Oliver for decapitating the League of Assassins, and as a result, Roy remains Oliver's sidekick, Arsenal, while getting back together with Thea._

 _Laurel and her father's relationship is still strained, as is his relationship with the rest of the Arrow team, but without just cause, due to the public gratitude due to Oliver saving the city again, he can do nothing._

 _Nyssa has returned to Nanda Parbat and has fought Merlyn for control of the League of Assassins in ritual combat, and to his great surprise, she defeated him and stabbed him in the gut before kicking him off the cliff to his death._

 _And now, Oliver is about to meet a new vigilante…_

"No, please!" the girl panted as her friends screamed in terror, the three of them trying to force themselves out of the bolted shut door as the man approached them, his glass covered eyes glinting in the pale streaks of moonlight that came through the windows.

"You asked for Bloody Mary, and Bloody Mary you shall have." He told them in a soft, frank voice, and the girl at the back, the oldest as she was nearly twenty, turned around, looking at their assailant frantically, tears streaming down her face, which was white with terror.

"No, we're sorry, we didn't know it would work, please, we don't want to meet Bloody Mary!" she insisted, but then she cut off, gurgling in her throat and the other two girls who had been at their girl's night and sleepover screamed in abject horror as their friend's body collapsed to the floor, blood spurting from her slit throat and spreading down her tank top and over the white floor, a wicked shard of glass lodged in her ruined neck.

"Bloody Mary doesn't wish to meet one such as you. You two however, she would rather like to meet." The man said in that eerie soft voice, and the two girls turned and started screaming, hammering at the door, desperate to escape…

And they could have almost laughed with relief as the deadbolted door actually sprang open and the two girls ran from the house, screaming in terror, hoping to rouse a neighbour, or a police officer or something.

But instead they ran right into the midst of a circle of black clothed men wearing ninja masks, their eye holes covered with glass, all of them with a golden chest with a coiled serpent embossed on the front. The girls screamed as they ran into them, turning and trying to get away from the people who had been standing there waiting for them only to run right back towards the man who had somehow managed to enter the house, had murdered their best friend and was the monster who was dogging their footsteps, who somehow knew the girls had evoked Bloody Mary as a dare, and was now seemingly determined to take them to her.

He looked different from the others. His clothes were still black, and he still had the embossed golden serpent on his chest, but his suit was bulkier somehow, more armour like. His mask was also different, far different from the normal ninja masks that the others were wearing. While still black, there were two white stitches that made it look as though he had fangs, framing his mouth. His eyes were covered in a pair of metal goggles, making his eyes look slitted, like that of a reptile, and the goggles were covered with yellow, insidious looking glass.

"Bloody Mary was invoked. You are required. Take them." He all but purred and the two quivering, terrified girls were suddenly blindfolded and gagged by his backup, and with that, they were spirited away into the back of a van and the group of men left the neighbourhood as quiet as if they had never been there at all.

XX

"You need to hurry." Felicity told them over their earpieces and Oliver allowed himself a small smile as he heard his girlfriend's voice.

"Babe, relax, we'll be in an out in a few minutes, long before Lance gets there, stop worrying so much. Honestly, since we started going out you've become a real nag." He teased and he heard an incredulous scoff from Felicity on the other hand, and unless he was mistaken a chuckle coming from Diggle.

"She'll make you pay for that." Roy, back once more in his Arsenal gear like he was meant to be, warned with a grin and Oliver grinned.

"Probably. Come on, she does have a point, we need to get there before Lance and his cronies come in and destroy anything we might be able to use." He told his sidekick only to hear an impatient, irritated noise coming from the other end.

"They're doing their jobs Oliver. Our issues with my dad aside." Laurel chastised and Roy exchanged a glance that communicated exactly what Oliver was thinking (that the three women in his life had become severe nags lately) as the two approached the house in question.

In the past three months, everything had changed for Team Arrow. Ra's al Ghul was dead, and the League of Assassins was now no longer a threat, as the organisation was now under the control of his now orphaned daughter, Nyssa, who had struck at Malcolm Merlin long before he had thought she would and had defeated and killed him in ritualistic combat on the same cliff that Oliver had once battled Ra's. With the end of the threat of the League of Assassins, the entire team had moved out from under the shroud they had been under, and life had returned to normal, if not better than before.

Oliver, as opposed to his usual brooding, moody demeanour, had perked up considerably, and had a much more amiable relationship with anyone he came across, and had become a lot less intense than he had been previously. That wasn't to say he had lost any of his edge, he was just as good as he had ever been, but he had become a lot more relaxed than he had ever been before, and was relaxing, joking more, and despite his initial reluctance, was now actually helping Laurel learn new moves and techniques. He and Roy had evolved into a true partnership, with Oliver acting as a mix between father figure, older brother, mentor and friend, and the two naturally complimented one another and Roy had improved drastically on his already excellent levels and was now nearly Oliver's equal in all things, and their relationship, while retaining a hint of Roy's hero worship of his partner, was much easier and had the sort of friendly banter that people in their situation enjoyed.

There was no doubt in anyone's minds as to what had brought about this new happiness and easiness in Oliver. After a lot of ups and downs for various reasons (most of which stemmed from Oliver being an idiot admittedly), Oliver and Felicity were finally together, and they were both the happiest they had ever been with one another. What was more, Felicity was now the owner of what had been Oliver's, and then Ray's company. As Ray had moved to Coast City to set up a new headquarters for his organisation (after a little accident in his lab which had involved him blowing the floor out of the building) he had deeded the company that was originally Queen Consolidated back to Felicity, while retaining a considerable interest. Now as the CEO of the newly rebranded Q-Core, with the occasional help from Walter Steele, the company had moved to a more technology based approach, and was now only competing with Wayne Industries to be the world's largest technological company, Felicity had revitalised the company, moving it away from the stain of Deathstroke's actions and the accidental blowing up of the lab floor (no one had been hurt but a very apologetic Ray Palmer had had to endure a lot of tricky questions). In a stroke of genius, Felicity had had the floor that Ray had blown up warded off and told people it was inaccessible and unusable, while in reality it was now their afterhours headquarters for their vigilante activities. Furthermore, she had now gotten Oliver involved in his company, having him act as an ambassador to other companies and making him the public face of the company, having him attend charity balls and making a philanthropist out of him. The two of them had done wonders in the last three months and their relationship was actually strengthened by their relationship both in and out of the office.

Diggle and Lyla were happily raising baby Sara, and what was more, Diggle was now responsible for the overseeing of all of Q-Core's security matters, and would also consult with the teams of people working on defensive weaponry in order to improve the gear of Oliver, Roy and Laurel. While this was mostly a cover, he did quite enjoy the job, and also occasionally acted as a consultant to ARGUS with Lyla whenever she needed a hand, while remaining an essential part of Team Arrow. He was also involved in the philanthropy work of the company, dedicating a lot of his time helping veterans either to adjust to life post-service or to help them make their way back into regular employment following leaving the army.

Roy, having taken the fall for Oliver when Ra's had framed him, had been cleared of all charges. In reluctant, begrudging gratitude for Oliver's actions in dealing with Ra's and decapitating the League of Assassins, as well as putting Merlyn into a position where he could be removed, Amanda Waller, the Director of ARGUS had cleared Roy's name, informing the public that Roy had taken the fall in order to flush the real culprit into the open to enable the true Arrow, and ARGUS, to thwart a potential terrorist attack on Starling City. As soon as his name had been cleared, Roy had rushed home to Starling and had once more taken up the mantle of Arsenal, and was once again the deputy manager of Verdant, working with Thea, who he had rekindled his romance with. Now nearly Oliver's equal, there was only one real problem in his life…his best friend happened to be the big brother of the woman he was dating, but that was a problem he could deal with.

Laurel's life however wasn't quite as rosy as the other members of Team Arrow's. While a full part of the team, and now being officially trained by Oliver to improve her skills, her relationship with her father was still so bad as to be considered virtually non-existent. Her professional life had improved but her father, still furious over the fact that she had kept Sara's death from him, and his temper further exacerbated by Oliver's escape from the police and the fact that Roy didn't even go down to make himself feel better, and her suspicions that her dad was drinking again, it made seeing him regularly very difficult for her, especially when she was the DA. On the other hand she maintained contact with Nyssa, and she had become good friends with both Felicity and Thea which was allowing her to get through her troubles with her dad without opening up old wounds.

And Nyssa had returned to Nanda Parbat. Forced to bend the knee to Malcolm Merlyn when he usurped the position of Ra's al Ghul, she had gone along with it for a grand total of ten days before she had challenged him to ritualistic combat, atop the same mountain where her father had killed Oliver. Malcolm, knowing his reign would never be secure while any relative of Ra's lived, had gladly accepted, and atop the snowy mountain, the two had fought, and in a twist Merlyn had certainly never expected, she had plunged her sword through his stomach, before telling him that she hoped he rotted in hell for his murder of her beloved, and with that she had happily kicked him from the cliff, his dumbstruck face happily playing on her mind as she watched the man who had murdered Sara plunge to his death.

The last three months had brought the same sense of calm to Starling that had existed before the arrival of the League of Assassins. With Waller's press statement about the false Arrows and the averted terrorist attack, Lance had been forced to call of the anti-vigilante task force and drop all charges against the Arrow, despite his personal belief that Oliver should be in prison. With that, Starling had returned largely to normal.

Until the last couple of weeks.

Children, all around their early teens, had been getting kidnapped from within their homes, all of which were generally locked. While there had been some murders, such as the attack tonight claiming the life of the oldest girl, generally the kids were kidnapped, and no one had seen hide nor hair of them since. This was all very worrying in and of itself, but there seemed to be a recurrent theme among the disappearances, all of them involving urban legends. Several of the houses with the missing children had virtually been flooded during the kidnapping, which had immediately begun tales that it was actually the spirit of La Llorona that was behind the disappearances. That had lasted until the next house, where all the mirrors had been shattered, which pointed to Bloody Mary being the culprit. In addition, there were also attacks where there were large claw marks in the floor, and bite marks in the unfortunate victims who hadn't been taken, which pointed to the legend of the crocodile man. These urban legend like attacks had continued, and now that another two kids had gone missing, it was imperative that they found out what the hell was going on here.

"This entire thing just seems off, I mean, why kill some of them and kidnap the others?" Roy asked, clad in his Arsenal uniform as the two archers headed towards the door of the house where the crime had been called in.

So far all the kidnappings had been within the outer limits of the city, in the suburbs where there was less chance of being discovered by both the police or one of the city's masked heroes be it the Arrow, Arsenal or the Black Canary. Clearly, the lack of presence out here had clearly emboldened whoever was behind this in order to make them come out of the darkness like they had, and now they were clearly exploiting their relative free reign, and as a result, there were now thirteen kids missing, including the two who had been taken tonight. As a result, pressure was mounting on all sides, and Oliver and his team were more determined than ever to find whoever it was that was behind this and kidnapping innocent children.

"That's what I'm hoping to find out. Ok Felicity, we're in, how long till Lance shows up?" Oliver asked, forcing open the door to the house, closing his eyes in sadness as he saw the murdered teenage girl.

"Four minutes and counting, so get what you need quick." She replied, typing away at her computers as the two vigilantes proceeded further into the house.

"Claw marks?" Roy asked behind him, looking around warily, as if alert for any signs that there was still something or someone there who could be a threat to them.

"No…her throat's just been slashed, nothing too weird about it." Oliver said grimly, checking the dead girl for any signs or hints, and Roy snorted derisively.

"Yeah, except that." He said, pointing to a mirror on the hallway wall, which seemed to have been struck right in the middle, and Oliver hissed his breath out through his teeth.

Each of these murders had one particular aspect to them, which was why the press was now dubbing the kidnappings and killings the work of a new villain going by the name of the Urban Legend. While Oliver, and the police for that matter, didn't believe for a second that there was only one guy doing this, the recurrent urban legend motif was making it easy for the press, and hence the public, to build the maniac up even more than they usually would be. So far, there had been several more prevalent rumours as to the true identity of the Urban Legend. Many people, influenced by the nearby Central City's metahumans, believed that it was the work of some form of shapeshifter which took the mood of whatever urban legend took it's fancy that night. However, the main theories were that the Urban Legend was actually: La Llorona (associated with the water soaking the floor at every one of those crime scenes, along with the children drowned in the bath when they had included a murder), Bloody Mary (in every one of those crime scenes every mirror in the house had been shattered and a piece of glass had tended to be used as a murder weapon), Crocodile Man (involving large claw like gouges out of the floor, and savage attacks where the victims had been ripped apart), Werewolves (there was some disagreement over this, as the m.o was much the same as the ones believed to be the work of the Crocodile Man but looking a little more surgical) and lastly Hook (when large strips had been cut out of the walls which were also punctured with holes, and the few victims of this one had been virtually cut in two by a curved blade, similar to a scimitar, or worse, a hook).

"Check the rest of the house, it looks like another Bloody Mary murder." Oliver ordered as he checked the girl for any signs of what had happened here, other than the large, jagged piece of glass that had been used to murder her.

The nature of these crimes were what got to him, why kill some of them and kidnap the others, it didn't make any sense. And the fixation with urban legends which were giving these killers their name, they just didn't make any sense. What was more, the ones like tonight's incident, in which the assailant had somehow managed to get inside a totally locked house without anyone having any clue how they had done it wasn't helping much either. So many kids had already been taken, and now another was dead and two more were missing, and his team and the police were just as clueless as each other about how they were going to find the missing kids, particularly before something happened to them.

"It's the same all through the house," Roy reported, coming back down the stairs and looking faintly disturbed, "all the mirrors have been shattered. Do you reckon they're doing it as they go along or do it afterwards?" he asked, and Oliver mused, he might be on to something there, if they did it afterwards it could mean that they returned to the crime scene to finish up creating the illusion that it was indeed Bloody Mary that they were dealing with.

"I'd say that they were doing it as they went along, but how they do it doesn't make sense, they'd have to split their focus and people would hear them smashing the glass." Oliver theorised, at least until Laurel chimed in over their com.

"Not necessarily, they could be using something like my canary cry." She suggested, and Oliver frowned, well, that could partially explain it, but that would surely shatter all the glass, not just the mirrors in the house.

"Maybe, but there's still something that we're missing. Come on Roy, we better get out of here before Lance shows up and shoots at us for messing up his crime scene." Oliver said darkly, beckoning to his sidekick and the two left the house, using their harpoon arrows to pull themselves up and over to the next house and used the roofs of the neighbouring houses to make good their escape, just as the sirens blazed to a halt and the place was suddenly filled with cops.

As the two archers made good their escape, Lance got out of his car, his eyes thinking he caught a flicker of red and green out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, he saw nothing. Dismissing it as a trick of the light, he headed into the crime scene while the two archers found their bikes and left the area behind.

On top of the billboard that was on top of the shop at the end of the street, another black clad figure watched, their eyes alert as the two archers blazed away on their bikes, and as the police began analysing the crime scene for clues. This was taking too long, and too many kids had gone missing already. It was time to end this.

Wrapping themselves in their cape, they leapt from the building, using their red underlined cape like a pair of wings to swoop down and land beside their bike before they too made their escape, the events of the evening preying on their mind.

XX

Oliver and Roy entered their hideout in the middle of the Q-Core building, Oliver's face grave as they did so.

"Tell me we have something that we can use Felicity." He asked, and she turned and faced him with a defeated expression.

"I'm sorry Ollie but there's still no way of tracking any of this, well, anywhere. The cameras in the street seem to mysteriously black out a second before the attack happens, and they black out again when the attackers leave. And before you ask, it isn't linked to just one of the urban killers, it's all of them, it's like they're using magic or something." She said helplessly, and Laurel, who had had a late night deposition and hadn't joined them out in the field, looked at them in concern.

"They can't be using magic…can they? I mean we've dealt with weird stuff before, and Ollie here is kind of living proof that weird stuff really does exist, but magic? Seriously?" she asked in disbelief, and Diggle looked at the screens, which Felicity had displaying the various victims who had vanished on one screen and the murdered victims on the other.

"Isn't it more likely to be a metahuman? Barry can phase through walls can't he, so what's to say that someone else can't travel through walls as well?" Roy asked, sitting down on the desk beside Felicity as she looked worriedly at the screens in front of her, her mind trying to figure out an answer to this puzzle.

"I don't think so, well I suppose we can't rule it out, but hasn't Barry already dealt with a metahuman who could create numerous copies of himself? It seems bizarre that there would be two who could do that." Oliver pointed out, and Laurel shot him a pointed look.

"There was two Weather Wizards wasn't there, why not two who can make endless clones of themselves?" she theorised, and Oliver had to admit, she had a point with that one.

But something, perhaps instinct, was telling him that that wasn't the case. There was something else going on here, something that they were missing, that allowed these urban legends to get into houses or flats miles above the ground, or through locked doors, and then either murder or kidnap the people within.

"Ok, have we run through all the usual suspects in town, and all the stuff we've dealt with before?" Oliver asked wearily, resting a hand on Roy's shoulder as the two vigilantes watched her type at her terminal station.

"Of course Oliver, we've been doing this a while now you know. I've checked everything, from dirty remnants of Queen Consolidated, to some stolen technology of Merlyn's, to possible rogue gadgets that Ray made before he left, I've even asked Nyssa, who you know isn't my favourite person, for help, and even she is stumped, she says even the League of Assassins would be struggling to do some of the stuff that these guys have been doing, I even looked up Mirakuru but that was a dead end too." She complained angrily, and Oliver laid a hand on her closest shoulder, his eyes focusing on her blazing expression as she turned around to give him a further piece of her mind.

"I know honey, I'm sorry, I know you're trying. And that we're all exhausted, and stumped. All I know is we now have what, thirteen missing kids along with seven dead, and we still have no clue how these so called urban legends are even getting into the houses to take the kids, let alone what they do with them after they've been taken." He lamented, and Laurel looked grimly at the screens, shaking her head slightly.

"The number keeps climbing, and those girls tonight, there's talk that the FBI are going to get involved to try and find out just what the hell is going on here, since both the police and us are stumped. Of course it doesn't help that dad is still treating me like persona non grata." She seethed, her nostrils flaring in annoyance and Roy sent her a sympathetic look.

"Wow, that sucks, still? Yeah, ok, maybe we did do wrong, but you're still his daughter." He said, and she gave him a humourless smile.

"Not anymore I'm not, not as far as he's concerned. And the situation's only getting worse, I mean hostility between the police and the DA's office is one thing, a full blown family feud is another. But for what it's worth, they're stumped too. Urban legends coming to life and snatching kids is a little above and beyond their paygrade. There's even rumours that they're going to start looking for someone else other than even the FBI to deal with all this." She informed them, and Diggle looked at her curiously.

"What, people like ARGUS?" he asked, scowling at the thought, and she shook her head, her blond hair cascading as she did so.

"No, some group called the DEO, they just had some major shakeup so they're basically looking to prove themselves to their bosses, show that they can be let off the leash again. But we're still a little bit further out from that I think, but the mayor is appealing for help, with everything the League of Assassins did, the people need reassured, but instead, we've got kids going missing from locked houses for god only knows what reason." She said darkly, and Oliver was inclined to agree, the fact that they didn't know just what was happening to or going to happen to the kids who had vanished certainly wasn't helping their case, and it was in turn making them even more stumped than they already were.

"I've looked at every bit of footage I can think of that might be helpful, including local CCTV and there's no sign anywhere of the people we're looking for, which of course we don't know who they are either sadly. I've tried cross-referencing any of the surrounding areas footage with what we know, like looking just before the feed's go black, but there's nothing that we can use." Felicity complained, and Roy cocked his head at the screen, his eyes glazing over a little.

"Huh…is there a way for you to access the layouts of all the houses and flats that have been hit?" he asked, and she looked at him in surprise before chewing her lip thoughtfully, turning back to her screens and hacking away.

"I should at least be able to access some of them, why, what are you thinking?" she asked, and Diggle's eyes widened in realisation, clicking his fingers.

"He's right, we might have been going about this all wrong. If there is some other way into the houses, like from down below, through the sewers or old passageways or anything like that, it would at least explain how they're getting in to the houses in the first place." He supplied, and Roy gave him a dirty look, distinctly nettled.

"Hey! I can finish my own thoughts thanks." He complained, making Diggle grin in amusement and Oliver looked at his sidekick curiously.

"What, you reckon they're getting in from underground or something?" he asked, and Roy shrugged.

"Don't know, but if they were underground and had some other way into the houses, then it would be easier for them to get in to actually kidnap the kids, without assuming that they actually are supernatural." He pointed out, and Felicity began typing away, accessing layouts of the places that were hit, her brow furrowed as she did so.

"You know, you might actually be on to something here. While not all the houses are linked, the old sewer way system that was replaced around about fifty years ago does run through all of the neighbourhoods that have been hit so far, that could actually explain it, if they're using the old sewer tunnels…" Felicity began, and Oliver nodded grimly.

"Then that could be how they're getting into the houses, they're coming in from underground and getting in that way, which would explain how they manage to make people think they're actually supernatural. Huh, honey, will you check any of the access points to those sewer lines that you can, see if any have CCTV anywhere near them, let's see what we can see." Oliver said, and Felicity's fingers were flying across the keyboard as she accessed the information she was looking for, and her eyes widened in surprise as she actually found what she was looking for.

"Well, I reckon a guy dressed up in a black ninja costume with a golden snake on the front and weird yellow goggles going into the abandoned sewer line is a bit weird, what about you guys?" she asked, and Oliver nodded, yeah, that definitely looked a little odd.

"Is there any way to track where he went after he entered the sewer line?" Laurel asked, but Felicity shook her head, looking put out.

"No, like I said, it's abandoned, there's no reason for it to be watched at all, mostly kids hang out there daring each other or doing drugs or stuff like that." She mused, and Roy looked at the screen, deep in thought.

"I can ask Sin to check around her friends…they don't talk to me anymore, I became respectable." He lamented, and the entire team grinned in amusement.

"So, are we thinking this guy is the Urban Killer?" Diggle asked, eyeing the ninja suited man in distaste, and Oliver shrugged.

"Either way he's the best lead we have to go on so far, so let's see what else we can find, see if he's shown up anywhere else. Even if he isn't the killer, he's probably linked to whoever actually is doing all this, so if we find him, we can use him to follow the trail back to whoever is behind this, and then we can hopefully find the missing kids before they turn up dead or worse." He said, and watched as Felicity tried to find more images of the snake ninja, her face clouded as they did so.

"It smacks of a cult, or some sort of terrorist organisation, and whoever they are they're like phantoms, and well organised, we haven't seen hide or hair of them, and we're stumped and so are the police, we haven't got any clue what they could be up to with these kids. It's like we're chasing down the Brotherhood of Blood all over again." Diggle complained, and Laurel nodded in agreement.

"Too true. But if we can find this guy, then we can hunt him down and bring him in." she reasoned, and Oliver nodded.

"Yeah the problem is we still have no way of tracing them or even finding out what they want, never mind where they are. Anything else?" he asked, and Felicity shook her head, chewing her lip in irritation.

"Not really, it looks like that last image was a fluke. And even if we do find him, he still wouldn't answer all the cases we have, what about the La Llorona cases, there's no explaining them, well, not easily anyway." She mused, and he had to admit, she did have a point about that one.

"Let's just go with this for now, see if we can find out anything about where this guy might be hiding. Roy, get on to Sin, she's fairly connected, she might have some info that us and the cops missed that'll help us track these missing kids down." Oliver ordered and Roy nodded and was just about to do so when something pinged on Felicity's computer, making her frown as she read it.

"Oliver, there's apparently some nutter running around downtown, either drunk or drugged, totally disorientated and attacking anybody who gets close to him." She told him and he raised an eyebrow as he looked at her.

"And that's different from any other night how?" he asked, unimpressed, and she hacked into the CCTV and brought up an image, which did catch the attention of everyone else in the room if nothing else.

"Wait is that?" Diggle asked in horror, and Felicity nodded grimly.

"Yeah, he's missing a hand and has a nice, stylish hook instead." She replied, enhancing the image to show the man swinging his hook and yelling abuse at everyone who was trying to get close to him, and he could see people in the background dialling numbers of their phones, clearly getting the police.

"Come on, this guy is dangerous is nothing else. And…" Oliver began, with his sidekick pulling up his hood and falling into step beside him.

"And considering he has a hook for a hand, he might be our Urban Killer." Roy concluded as the two of them descended down the lift, leaving the other three behind in the room, and as the lift descended the building, Diggle turned to look at Laurel, his face sceptical.

"So far these guys have been very careful to avoid getting into any situation where they're exposed and out in the open, if they're doing it now, it's either a miracle…" he began, and Laurel's face flickered in resignation.

"Or they're using it as a distraction to do something even worse." She concluded, as Felicity frowned at the scene playing out on the screen in front of her, her gaze drawn to something she had missed before.

"What the…who the hell is that?" she asked, as a figure clad in red and black called out a challenge to the hook man, and put themselves right into his sights.

"Ollie, you might want to hurry, one the police know and are on their way, but worse, there's some badly dressed chick trying to get herself skewered by this guy." She said on their comms.

"We're on it, don't worry." He assured her, as he and Roy sped away from the building, but as the figure challenging the hook man moved out into the light, Felicity's eyebrows jumped towards her hairline as she saw just who, or perhaps more accurately what, was challenging the hook man.

"Is that?" Laurel demanded in surprise, and Felicity nodded.

"Yep, that's another black leather clad vigilante…with awesome boots." Felicity concluded as she and the others leaned in to watch the show.

XX

"Look, if you just let me help you we can get all of this sorted out." The new vigilante told Hook Man, who snarled and apparently deciding she was a threat, came at her, his hook slashing through the air in an attempt to skewer her.

Flipping away from the attack, she quickly took in the scene. Upon seeing the man a few brave Samaritans, undoubtedly inspired by Starling City's resident vigilante, took it upon themselves to try and calm the man down and defuse him who were now all sporting various slashes and cuts, however fortunately it didn't look like any of them would be fatal, provided she could sink this guy before things got worse.

"No! Can't, must…kill!" he bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth and he stampeded towards her, forcing her to cartwheel out of the way, firing her line launcher towards the roof of the apartment building behind him, pulling her into the air and away from the slash of his lethal looking scythe like hook.

Landing catlike behind Hookman, she studied him. Big, tall and bulging with unnatural levels of muscle, it was like he'd taken a bad dose of steroids to turn him into this monster of a man, doubling him in size of that of a normal man. But it wasn't that which made him the most dangerous. While the bulging muscles would indeed pose a challenge, the real problem was the fact that his left hand had been replaced by a long, scythe like hook, tinged with rust and what looked like blood, and now, she was going to have to neutralise this guy quickly, before he hurt anyone else, and also in order to save the guy's life.

After all, whatever this guy had become, he wasn't meant to look like this.

Hookman snarled in fury, showing teeth that were the same size as her fingers, and she winced, berating herself silently for her failure. She had missed the signs that the cult group was coming here, and now they were well and truly entrenched, and it seemed like both the police and the local vigilantes were as clueless as one another on how to defeat these guys.

Fortunately for them, she was now in town, and knew exactly what they were capable of, having dealt with them before.

"Look kid, we don't need to do this." She tried again, but the man simply roared and charged at her, stampeding towards his opponent, hook jerking up into the air in order to try and cleave her in two.

She danced out of the way, her fist slamming into his chest, shrieking a little in pain as it felt like slamming her hand into a brick wall. Hookman didn't even stumble, roaring and blowing spittle through the air, turning far more gracefully than she could have imagined, his hook going right for her stomach.

"You're not getting me like that." She vowed, remembering what had happened to her cousin, grabbing hold of the hook and pulling down on his weapon, making him stumble, her red gloved fist crashing into his chin and knocking him backwards, but only by a few steps, but that was all she needed. Leaping into the air, she hammered her hands down on the base of his neck as she landed on his back, Hookman roaring and rearing, swinging his hook around in fury, trying to dislodge her.

Holding on for grim life, she tried to wrangle her opponent, looking for any way to subdue him and bring him down without having to resort to greater force, but he clearly wasn't as interested in that as she was. Snarling, he grabbed her by the head, throwing her away from him and she slammed into the wall, the breath gushing out of her as she slammed into the wall. Spots dancing in her eyes, Hookman roared, his hook slashing down to end her life, but with a burst of effort, she threw herself away from the wall, smirking in smug satisfaction as she heard the hook imbed in the wall, storming in fury as he was rendered impotent.

Leaping back to her feet, she flicked three of her boomerang like weapons at Hookman who pulled himself from the wall, but too late to help himself, the blades embedding themselves into the thick skin of his face, his wild eyes bulging in pain as they dug into him, making him roar in frustrated pain as he stormed towards her, the new vigilante, using her line launcher to pull herself into the air, just avoiding his blade as he swept it as if to take off her head. Grunting in annoyance, she let go of her line, landing on his shoulder, pummelling into his thick head with her fists, trying to find some way to slow him down.

Now furious beyond measure however, all she seemed to be doing was making him angrier, so instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck, praying that this would work. Flipping off of him, arms still around his neck, he gave a roar of surprise as his momentum combined with her own, flipped him off his feet and crashed him into the earth, the man bellowing like a wounded animal as he felt the shattered sidewalk dig into his back. Reaching towards her with his one good hand, she grabbed it, and with a great deal of force, she shattered the bone, making him cry out in fury as she did so, deftly avoiding the hook as he tried to puncture her side. Grabbing hold of the hook, she held on for a second, before wrapping her wrist cable around the offending weapon and firing the harpoon end into the wall, pinning the arm in place, and as he struggled to free himself, she sighed in annoyance, readying her gas launcher in her opposite wrist and jettisoned the canister in his face.

Hookman spluttered in rage and shock, but after a second, despite all the other chemicals currently pumping through his body, his eyes rolled back in his head and the massive hulking brute finally gave in and slipped into unconsciousness.

Breathing heavily and wincing a little from where she had slammed into the wall, she was just about to head towards the hook when she heard the unmistakable sound of two bows being pulled behind her, and she turned around, her cape swirling around her as she came face to face with Starling City's resident hero and his sidekick.

She was quite a tall woman, well built, and clearly an expert with various sorts of martial training. She was clad in a black armoured suit, her long knee length boots a blazing red, matching the spiked gauntlets on her arms, and the red bat like symbol on her chest. She had a cape descending from her shoulders, red on the inside and black on the outside. A vampirish looking mask protected the top of her face, leaving only the alabaster white of her lower face revealed, including her vivid red lips. A long cascade of fiery red hair descended from her shoulders as she locked eyes with Oliver.

"The Green Arrow, and his Arsenal. Nice to meet you." She said, and Oliver cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Good work with him. And you are?" he challenged, and she smiled a little, her white lenses over her eyes giving nothing away as she replied.

"I'm Batwoman."

 **Hello, this is just something a little different**

 **While I did like season three, admittedly, it wasnt as good as season two, and they also misfired with several decisions, such as letting Roy leave and not keeping him around when he had so much more potential, hence the slightly different universe in this story**

 **On top of that, Batwoman is my favourite character from all the comics I've been collecting recently, and I thought up this little story just to see how she would get on with Oliver as the two of them join forces to deal with a nasty group of villains who have moved into Starling City**

 **Let me know what you think and if you want me to continue, to find out exactly who we are dealing with and just how Oliver will learn to play with another vigilante being in his city**

 **So let me know what you think, I know it takes a while to get going and I was having trouble capturing Felicity and Diggle, while bearing in mind we do have a slightly chipper Oliver, but either way, let me know if you want me to continue**

 **Hope to hear from you all soon!**


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